


what are feelings without emotions

by aMassiveDisappointment (BadOldWest)



Series: tumblr prompts [6]
Category: Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Bodyguard, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Bodyguard, Eventual Smut, F/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-10-23
Updated: 2017-11-02
Packaged: 2019-01-21 16:20:36
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 5,741
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12461421
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BadOldWest/pseuds/aMassiveDisappointment
Summary: Jyn Erso survived the rigorous training of the Academy, and is now sworn to protect Cassian Andor. But for some reason, the universe is making it as difficult as possible for both of them to make this arrangement work.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> "I wish you would write a fic where.... Jyn is Cassian's bodyguard. (We all know that she's way better in a fist fight). Standard "important person falls in live wth bodyguard, and vice versa," but gender swapped from the norm because that works better for these two. Of course with that way you have of making standard tropes non-standard that you do so well."

“Your life is worthless.”

“My life is worthless.”

“There is nothing that should make you hesitate to lay your life down in service.”

“There is nothing that should make me hesitate to…”

And it went like that, every day. Every ten seconds. The infinite hourglass of her mind. The sand spilled out,  _my life is worthless,_ flipped back over, running down again,  _there is nothing that should make me hesitate to lay down my life in service._  Flip. Flip. Flip.

Cassian was at first too proud accept the careful watch of a woman as his captain of the guard, too close at all times, shoving her body in front of knives and arrows and fists to save him. 

Jyn had been trained to do so, and was offended that he hadn’t wanted the parts of her that were useful; her life was utterly worthless as years of training had confirmed, but her combat skills made her useful. She wanted to be given purpose. 

Cassian didn’t like the look of it. Her life at his feet. Her assessing mind shuffling him around into safe places. 

Maybe compassion disguised itself as pride.

It was uncivilized, in his mind, but her training was impeccable, and his few attempts at conversation had made it clear she would betray no humanity after years in the academy. It was like talking to a wall. 

His discomfort peaked during an assassination attempt where his room was occupied by him and another, and her alert that someone had scaled the wall outside to enter through the window did mean she had to burst in. 

Jyn, her name was, kept her face impassive as his lover quickly dressed, her face cool as she dragged the assailants body towards the window and calmly tipped him out of it. Then she was back out the door into the hallway, her nightly post. She had barely the presence of a shadow, and the blonde in his bed dropped back onto the mattress, hair mussed and cheeks still flushed from the activities precluding attempted murder. 

“She could act a little more formal than if she was just removing some dirty laundry. I hope she wasn’t listening in.”

She was. She had to.

Jyn was supposed to leave no impression. It was her job, and she did it well. 

The job demanded sacrifice. She was the sacrifice, and it wasn’t too awful to have a couple of snapped ribs before the inevitable day the rest of her would be handed over to death. 

Cassian felt guilty over the mountain of a man she had protected him from, and her injuries, so he visited her in the hospital. She was healing quickly. Reading a book about stars when he came to her bedside. 

“I’m sorry.”

She looked ahead. Not at him. 

She wasn’t supposed to. 

“It’s my job,” she said, a fact, and a known one. A deflection. 

“You never look at me.”

“I’m not supposed to look up at you. It establishes a connection, sir. ”

“I…” he sighed. “I don’t like that, Jyn.”

“Just Captain.”

 _“Jyn,”_  he said pointedly. “Thank you for saving me.”

She did glance up, very quickly, and her eyes went back down. “It’s fine, sir. It was better than the last time.”

He remembered the scandalized scream of his lady friend when Jyn kicked the door down to protect him from an intruder. A smile pulled his lips. 

“I didn’t know you could joke.”

The tension in her face relaxed. “The secret is out.”

She had a night off. Most soldiers did, some guards had families. She never would, according to her training. Because she was the last level of defense for him. But she was allowed a trip to a bar and a beer. Just to keep her from going crazy. He couldn’t help but try and picture how her body moved in other ways than fighting.

He didn’t like her nights off. He never slept when it wasn’t Jyn outside his door. He wondered if she danced. She was graceful, and he’d seen a bizarre rhythm to the way she fought. 

He never felt as vulnerable, as mortal, as he did when she was gone.

Did she laugh, if she could joke? Did she judge his romantic entanglements, the way he brought women into the room she was stationed outside of, or did she have her own lovers in her own moments of privacy? She didn’t like those women, he knew that much. Could feel the encroaching judgement from outside the door. It made Cassian send people away, the aura of it was so strong, and she would have to come in and do a final sweep before he went to bed. He sent them all away before morning for her to do a final check before he fell asleep. 

He shouldn’t be resentful of her free time, but he never had any privacy from her. At this point, there was nothing about him she hadn’t seen, didn’t know, and that drove him crazy.

Her return betrayed none of these answers. 

He had black moods, and she was required to be present no matter what state he was in. Drunk, he would sometimes try to pull a reaction out of her. 

“Look at me.”

Her eyes were on the floor. They were in the castle of an ally they weren’t sure they could trust yet. That meant there was never a door keeping them apart. 

She shook her head. 

He grabbed her chin. 

There was no one allowed to touch him, but there were no rules about him touching her. It was a horrifying vulnerability that made her training abandon her. 

 _“Look at me,”_  he pulled her eyes to his, forcing her chin up despite her struggle. What if she hurt him trying to push him away? Everything she knew was at war, so she stayed still. And looked in his eyes. 

“There is no part of my life where I can be alone from you,” he whispered. She shrugged. 

“I am no one, sir. You might as well worry about the opinion of a dog.”

He shook his head. 

“I can hear you thinking. I can hear it.”

She wrapped her hand around his and pulled it away, pacing to the far side of the room.

“You are wrong.”

“You have feelings Jyn. You are human.”

Her jaw set. “It’s not supposed to be that way. My training…”

“Fuck your training.” 

Her hands fisted at her side. She chose silence as her weapon. 

“Tell me one true thing about you.”

She shook her head. Her nostrils flared. 

“One true thing, and I won’t look at you anymore.”

Her breath released, her eyes closing. 

“My family died before I entered the academy. That’s the only thing I know.”

Cassian sat on his bed and covered his face in his hands. He wasn’t looking. He had promised. 

He did glance, once. 

She was looking at him.


	2. Chapter 2

“Where were you born?”

“Doesn’t matter.”

“Did you have any siblings?”

“You don’t need to know.”

“How did you find yourself in the academy?”

Jyn finally looked up from the floor, an annoyed look gracing her usually calm face. He couldn’t help but smile.

“You ask too many questions.”

He leaned back in his chair, setting down the documents he was supposed to be overlooking. 

“Well, seeing as you know so much about me, it’s only fair.”

Her breath released from her nose in an audible hiss, and he knew how trained her breathing was. He was getting under her skin. 

And they both knew how incredibly dangerous that was. 

Jyn had to follow him everywhere, it was really her one order, so he kept pushing the boundary of that. He stopped putting a door between her and his flirtations, and her irritation shook the room like a black radiation. There was the first sign of a tell when he pulled a girl into his lap at the dinner table, a meal only Jyn and one other guard were privy to, and kissed the soft column of her neck. She giggled, and because of the company, it was the only sound in the room other than a light sucking. Jyn’s brow raised only slightly, her thumb rising to bite the nail in her teeth. The whole hand seized, fingers flaring in extension, as though she remembered herself and a habit she had to break. Knowing the academy, it had been broken by breaking other parts of her first. He’d befriended the elderly captain of the guard assigned to him before Jyn, retired now, who had loved to tell war stories of his training days. 

“They’d make you stand on one foot,” Kes smiled fondly, despite the obvious unpleasantness of the topic, “And they’d throw things at you. Wouldn’t let you flinch, or they’d hit you the next time they threw a rock.”

Jyn wasn’t one for flinching, and Cassian tested that, but when he lifted his eyes from where he was kissing to her face, she was looking back, and she did flinch away.

.

“You’re angry,” he observed during her nightly examination of his room. After an attempt on his life the previous month, she’d had to pat down his guest, a look of horrified disgust plastered over her face. 

The attempt had added some tension between them, her fighting the assailant with a fierceness he still had dreams about. Once he was pinned to the ground, she just kept fighting him. There was the obvious rule she wasn’t allowed to kill an attacker if possible, to try and get answers about who sent them, but once she had her pin secure, she just kept striking. Blood was spurting across the bricks, and Cassian almost had to pull her off to rescue his attempted murderer.

She was just as easy to talk to about it as she was anything else. She gave no answers about her bout of unprofessional rage. 

“I’m not angry,” she said quietly, gazing out the window, looking at the blind spot of the Southern perimeter. The scout stationed there signaled her. She signaled back. “I have no opinion of you.”

It stung, but further painful were all the reasons she had to lie, because she was in the right to do so, and they both knew it.

.

If she really had to follow him, if she really had to, he was going to make it hard for her on this day of all days. Her footsteps were quiet, and she didn’t say a word when he stormed outside into the rain. He hadn’t the thought to get himself a jacket, but that decision also deprived her of one, which he has intended to shake her off.

She kept a close proximity to his clipped pace. The rain was forceful, and it was almost like they were weaving through a solid jungle of it instead of a wide field. She kept the distance required, but no more. He walked until he couldn’t go further, his vision blinded by the strength of the drops, his clothes and hair plastered with water. 

Jyn was quiet, ten feet away, hands folded in front of her. The water had not spared her either. He felt slightly guilty for putting her through that, but not enough to apologize, or go back inside yet.

“I could catch a chill and die,” he informed her. “From the rain. How is this protecting me?”

Her lips were white, clearly tightened from anger. Her hair was slick and plastered to her cheeks. “I am honor bound to protect you from assailants. Your own foolishness is your own.”

He laughed, it was without heart, and drew close. She didn’t have the nerve to move.

“So it doesn’t bother you, truly, should I live or die?”

Her face was unreadable, her eyes gazing just over his shoulder to avoid his gaze. “If I fail to protect you from an attacker, I care. Anything else is irrelevant.”

He tried to reach for her, if only to make her treat him like a person and not precious cargo, but her hand lashed out and for once, protected herself.

“And the cause I represent?”

She took a deep breath, squeezing his wrist hard enough to hurt. 

“I don’t get involved in politics. Frankly, I don’t care one way or the other. Just that this is the task I have been assigned.”

“Well I’m glad you’ve found yourself the safest place to be a neutral party. Why does that make it seem like I shouldn’t trust you, since you have nothing to gain?”

“Because I’ve trusted in the fact you are worth protecting when I was assigned to you. That’s a vow.”

She dropped his wrist when she said it, and he realized that when she touched him, she hadn’t let it go.

He drew close, and she didn’t step back or disarm him. They were both shivering from the rain. 

“We should go.”

“That’s for me to decide.”

“I could knock you out and drag you back.”

“You said you didn’t care.”

“We’re out in the open here. I can’t protect you. From..long range weapons.” her words faltered when his hands wrapped around her waist.

“We’re the only ones stupid enough to be out in this.”

She did look in his eyes, and the look was a frightened one. He had never seen that emotion even possible for her.

“Will you come willingly, or by force” she finally hissed, and he pulled away to walk back to the castle. She followed, from farther than usual.

.

He’d made her sick, and himself sick from guilt as she shivered from his open doorway. He hadn’t shut it for the night, so she was allowed to stand outside. He watched her shoulder tremble from a feverish shivering. She would never admit it. The threats to his life were growing worse, so she wasn’t allowed to be far enough away to give either of them privacy. 

He heard her sneeze.

“Jyn?” he called out. “I’m turning in for the night.”

She shut the door behind her, taking her resident spot in the doorway, her posture slightly sagged. 

“Lock the door.”

She complied. 

He took a deep breath. “I made you ill.”

She shook her head. He knew the ways of the academy. She’d never admit she was mortal, human like him.

“You need rest.”

“I’m fine.”

“Jyn,” he peeled back to covers of his bed. “Get some sleep.”

_“I have to-”_

There was a flush over the bridge of her nose. She did lift her eyes, not to him, but the bed. He wished he could have saved the longing in her eyes in a portrait.

“I’ll stay up. I owe you one night’s rest, after all you’ve done for me.”

“It’s my job.”

“I know what the academy did to you, Jyn. And you mean more to me than a disposable watchdog. Can’t we find a balance of respect here? Treating each other like people and not things?”

The academy had taken all those possibilities away. She tried to say so, but the words would come out. She had been beaten to the point of breaking to know there was nothing to lose. To keep herself from being ill was to put a value on her life; which it did not have. 

But to live another day was to protect him another day. Maybe that would be the meaning to it.

“I…”

But there was nothing she could put into words.

“Jyn. I got you sick. I deserve to allow you to rest. I’ll keep watch for both of us and let you know the moment something is amiss.”

He caught her by the arm and she was too feverish to punch him for getting close, and let him guide her to his bed. He took residence at a nearby chair after lying her under the covers. She curled up in the warm nest, in her fevered state, a sigh let out. Cassian would be just as steadfast in keeping watch. 

It was more of a reveal of what she was feeling than anything else she’d given him; and how to him it felt for that feeling being gratitude. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Didn't want to upload this all at once, I have one more chapter written that will probably come up tomorrow.


	3. Chapter 3

“I have a theory.”

She lifted her eyes from the floor, but her head stayed tilted down. Still, he saw it, and he smiled. 

“A theory,” she replied blandly, but there was a hint of amusement. That was all he had needed. 

“You’re not human.”

She snorted.

“I’ve yet to see you lose a fight. It does explain the lack of sleep,” he continued, and there was a flicker to her smirk, something pained there.

“Academy does that to you,” she said simply, a lead curtain shielding her from his line of inquiry. He leaned back in his desk. 

“What else does it do?”

She straightened her back. “I’ll leave you to your theories.”

He licked his thumb before turning his page. 

“They  _are_  more fun.”

.

He had tried to charm her. It seemed to annoy her more than anything else. 

“On weekends, I know a few clubs where you could make some money on fights. I’d promote you, obviously. We’d be rich.”

She shook her head, watching him swim from behind her sunglasses with a relaxed look on her face that he now equated with her happiness. 

“You’re already rich, sir.”

He swam to the edge of the pool, grinning up at her. “You’ve slept in my bed. You don’t have to call me ‘sir’ anymore.”

Her stance shifted, uncomfortable. She looked over her shoulder like she was doing the usual once-every-sixty-seconds check. 

“Are you feeling better?”

She nodded. “I run high fevers, but they burn out fast.”

“I’m glad you’re well.” 

She shrugged. 

“Should make no difference to you.”

He shrugged back, his chin on the ledge of the concrete. She kept her face impassive. He pointed up to her. 

“You underestimate the team we could make. We already have to trust each other.”

There was a throat clearing from the other side of the fence. Draven was glaring daggers at Jyn, who did her perimeter check and then hid her eyes again. 

.

“We can relocate her. Or send her back for more thorough training.”

“The Academy doesn’t take back students.”

“And it doesn’t fix failures,” Draven said morbidly, and the threat was there. 

_You could get her and yourself killed, stop thinking with your dick._

Jyn avoided his eyes from that day on, it was like talking to a wall again. 

.

Cassian had given her a kindness by letting her sleep, he had also lent her a humanity she wasn’t sure he was letting her give back. It was left clenched anxiously in her fist. Her fear sharpened to a point that notched the tip in his sternum; a blade that was ready to cut. 

She was supposed to be fearless. 

She tried to repay the honor by being as diligent a possible. She worked overtime, and there were no slip ups. On a streetcorner, someone with a knife was at his side and Jyn had the assailant on the ground before anyone had a clue what was going on. Cassian was whisked into a black car with lesser ranked security and she cleaned up the mess.

He liked to go places on foot because it meant Jyn had to walk with him.

.

“Who are you?”

She glanced up from her crouched position at the foot of his bed, which she had to check underneath for procedure, but still made him feel like his mother was checking for monsters. He didn’t want to admit that however absurd, it did help him sleep better. 

“I’m your bodyguard,” her brow knit together, “Cassian? Have you been drugged?”

He rolled his eyes, staring at the ceiling. He used to, out of politeness, wait to get into his bed until she left the room. But he was getting increasingly annoyed by his lowered sense of privacy.

“No, who are you? Outside of the Academy.”

She withdrew herself from her own face, a blankness that amazed him. “I’m not really anyone at all. I can’t be.”

She dropped the edge of his blankets. 

“Remind Baze to check the walk-in tomorrow night.”

He sat up in bed, no longer lounging smugly. 

“Tomorrow?”

“My night off. He forgets. I checked the cameras on his nights, and he always forgets.”

“Cameras?”

_What else had she seen?_

She shrugged. “I’m impartial, Cassian Andor. I have to be.”

She left him in the heavy silence that followed, his face flushed that Jyn Erso had definitely seen him naked and found herself to still be  _impartial._

_._

Her nights off were always restless, and this one was no better than usual.

This time he saw her leave. It was the first time she existed in a space he didn’t feel, and it was just the black shadow of her trotting across the front lawn in a her usual jacket and tight black pants, her hair long and loose for the first time he’d ever seen it. 

She once voiced that she preferred that he stay home when she wasn’t there to accompany him. 

But he voiced a lot of things she refuted, so this was becoming a bit murky. 

He hadn’t gone anywhere without security in months. Baze would have to come with him, and meeting up with Jyn would reflect negatively on her. It could put her at risk.

He snuck out.

.

Jyn did dance, and well, and without the jacket. This was the snapshot that made the whole risk worth it, but her rolling hips were enough to keep him planted in that club with his eyes on her. 

He watched as long as it lasted, until she jogged off to the bar, a tank top hugging her slender frame and a sheen of sweat seeming to release her worries. She glanced around the upper level, where he was, and he darted back from the railing. He could have sworn she saw him but her face would have betrayed that. Then, she vanished around one corner of the bar, probably to use the washroom. 

He ran a hand through his hair, enjoying the music of the club she chose, and decided to quit while he was ahead. 

As soon as he cleared the first corner of the street, he was being shoved into an alley. Well, he did deserve that. 

“What the fuck are you doing?”

His assailant was Jyn. He’d never seen her outwardly angry. 

“Trying to see what you’re doing.”

“Idiot.” she pushed herself back from him, pacing across the alley. He may have ruined her night off, because now she had to get him home safely. 

“I didn’t think you’d be stuck with me, I was just…curious.”

She glared at him. 

“And you thought what? We’d get close? Grab a drink? Be best friends? I have to be ready to die for you, Cassian. That’s what I’m here for. I’m disposable.”

“I… _quit, Jyn_. Don’t do that. I don’t want that.”

“Then someone else will need to take my place. It might as well be me.”

She pulled out a phone. “I’m calling Baze.”

“You will get sent back to the Academy.”

Her fist tightened around the phone, but she lowered it. Her jaw clenched. 

“Jyn…”

“I can’t.”

“Jyn, come here.”

She pressed the heel of her hand over her mouth, exhaling through her nose.

“It’s your night off. We can…pretend.”

She actually laughed. “Pretend what? Pretend I haven’t seen you naked already? Pretend you haven’t had sex with women in front of me?”

“Pretend you can be anyone at all.”

The words struck her, and she was breathing heavily, like he’d never seen her do. She bit her lip, her face crumpled. She took a step towards him.

He relaxed against the brick wall. She had to come to him. He had too much leverage, forcing himself to cross that distance seemed to violate her right for choice. 

“I never had sex in front of you.”

She shook her head. “Everything but. The rest was security cameras.”

“No one said you had to watch them.”

She took a shaky breath, slipping a few fingers under his belt, yanking him close. 

“I said I had to,” she breathed against his lips, and her mouth was pressing to his with as much force as a fight. The admittance makes his legs feel weak. He couldn’t believe he was going to interrupt a kiss with her, but he had to ask.

“Why?”

Her eyes were heavily lidded, she stared at his lips. “Danger. Potential blind spots for when you’re occupied with a partner. And I wanted to see what all the moaning was about.”

“Did you like to watch?”

She nodded, deciding to kiss instead of explain. He accepted it.

He gripped her close, because they could be anyone in that moment, and he could finally be the person who could openly want her as much as he did. 


	4. Chapter 4

“Where does this go?”

Her head fell back against the brick, her hair in her face, her eyes dazed and her lips kissed and it all spiraling out from beneath her. “I don’t know.”

“Tell me, let this be honest,” his face hovered over hers. There was something in his eyes, he was never, never going to kiss her again if she did not permit it. She considered that power. 

“Do you still think I’m not human?”

He laughed, his breath brushing her lip. It weighed her judgement towards kissing again.

“I’m here because I may be the only one who thinks you’re human.”

She sighed against his lips.

“Go back to bed, Cassian.”

He stepped back, but his expression was openly hurt. 

“Go back to your bed, Cassian,” she swallowed. “You never know who’s creeping around at night.”

He nodded once, understanding, his hands twitching at his hands. It couldn’t be there. He couldn’t be caught without a watcher, and she was notably off-watch that night. The way she was looking at him, it was almost clear she was going to  _hurt_  him with her newly awarded freedom.

Cassian waited up for her, his body unable to move. Just a hand on his knee and a feeble attempt to calm his breath. 

(His entrance had been clumsy, but Jyn had warned him that if he was caught outside of his room, Baze could lose his life. She had threatened him a great deal of terrible things to prevent this. Baze had entered upon his arrival, but Cassian was in his room, if having fallen through the window. Jyn was going to erase the security footage first.)

There was the rush of air of a hawk’s strike, but otherwise no sound noted Jyn’s arrival until he glanced up and saw her standing in the window.

She tossed aside the helmet of her bike, which was usually what she accompanied him on when he was in his armored car. Her hands scratched at her scalp, driving some life into her hair, which was matted from sweat and smoky from the club. She considered him, locked on his face, with a slide like a stroke of curious fingers. 

Then she was on him, kissing hungrily. He groaned and fell back against his sheets, hands running down her spine, gripping her ass as she straddled him. 

“You drive me insane,” she murmured, the first sign of a temper, and he laughed because she was so trained for indifference he had never thought her capable of madness. 

She shed her leather jacket, which was a permanent as a layer of skin until that point. He marveled at her bare arms, her pale skin, with an awe and fear. Her uniform had taken some of that humanity away, and now to see it was magic.

“It was my way of fighting for you.”

His teeth bared when he smiled, and the kiss took a bite out of her.

She rolled her eyes. Lifted the hem of her black tank top. There was a scar knotting from navel to hipbone. 

“Don’t ever lecture me about what you’ve done for me when I earned this one for you.” She smirked at his gaping expression, shimmying the tank off, “or this one, and this one…”

She was marked, at some places clearly down to the bone, from protecting him. He let out a pathetic groan, kissing under her navel, making soothing noises agist the rough patches of skin.

“I didn’t-  _I never-”_

She shook her head, letting it fall back as he examined a bruise under her ribs, his hair tickling her breast.

“I know. If it wasn’t you, it’d be someone else. I have to.”

She shoved him onto his back, leaning forward to kiss him. He reached between them, even when she tried to shove her torso against his to prevent him from looking closer. His fingers found the scar. 

“I don’t like that I did this to you.”

“You didn’t,” she dismissed, kicking off her jeans as she spoke, “don’t talk about work on my night off.”

He relented, but there was something rising in his throat as she pulled his shirt off. Shame. 

“Cassian,” she was still straddling his stomach, her hands on his chest. “You let me do the one thing I’m good at. So hush. Or I’ll leave.”

“I never knew about-”

She pressed down on his chest, swiftly, to regain his focus. The air left his lungs. 

“I want the man I saw in the security footage,” Her eyes were intent on his, so much sharper with the heavy eyeliner she put on for the few nights she was allowed to do as she pleased. “Don’t expect me to soothe you, I’m all edges, and that’s the only way we fit.”

Finally, a tangible request. Just the hint at what she wanted helped immensely, he had her on her back in seconds. He gripped her bare ass, exploring her skin, moving just enough that their bodies, chest to chest, and stretching down lengthwise, had enough friction to know how closely they touched. Constant motion kept her shivering; brought her hand to clench the pillow behind her head as she chewed her lip, had her writhe her body up against his. Pressing back. Working with him. Falling to pieces as he pressed onward, baring her hips from her underwear and sliding it down her soft legs. But a kiss would make the muscle beneath jump, a flex that had her posed like marble under his lips. Her body fascinated him, the wire-y scars, the solid strength. He slid between her legs, feeling her naked against his cock, and shudders wracked his arms. He could barely hold himself up, and he half-expected she could wrap her legs around his waist and do all the work from where she was. 

Her eyes glittered up at him. They warned him. He’d better not.

“You liked to watch me fuck other women?”

Her breath went shaky as he pressed against her, close enough to promise, but far enough to threaten. 

“No.”

“But you said-”

“I had to watch,” she licked her lips, “because that was supposed to be all I would ever get, Cassian. That was settling for it. Never asking for more.”

There was no stalling to be done after that. She’d given him so much. He found a nirvana-like relief in being able to finally give her something back.

.

Jyn was still allowed a few hours of training a week; her sparring matches were infamous. Cassian had wanted little to do with them, but Draven requested a viewing, maybe to remind him of his place as an elected official. Cassian reluctantly, but curiously, accepted. He’d felt that same body under his, soft but strong, and he wanted to see what it could do.

That body had seemed like a dream, not a memory, because she was gone before he woke up, silent, and back to not even looking at him.

She’d had her night off of being his. She made it obvious on the clock what being his meant. And he couldn’t touch her while she was technically working for him, when that meant she would have to be willing to die for him. 

Jyn would be fighting one of her mentors at the academy, Saw Gerrera. Cassian was intrigued to see an older generation, the person who made Jyn was she was. It was morbid fascination, because that night a week ago, his tongue had worked laboriously against her to undo all of that conditioning.

Jyn was small, and he saw her fighting strength was in her center of gravity, she kept it low. So anyone bigger would have to lean down, lower themselves. It always made for her going lower, always dragging them down, and being able to toss them around from her solid, low stance. 

Saw seemed to know this too. Even though things were more formal with him and Draven watching from the back, there were clearly different rules here. Saw had no qualms about beating Cassian’s captain of the guard soundly right in front of him.

This was a mistake. This was a huge mistake. 

Jyn already had a black eye, and occasionally spit blood onto the mats when Saw swung. 

“All that work for nothing,” Saw was in her head, and Cassian’s presence was making it worse. “I broke you to protect you, don’t tell me you’re too weak to heal yourself.”

Jyn attacked blindly, her face in a rage that was clearly personal. 

“Alright,” Cassian addressed Draven, which sickened him. He couldn’t step up for Jyn. “We’ve seen enough. I don’t need her to be useless from this.”

“The winner serves under you while the loser recovers.”

“That’s a waste of two bodies.” Cassian waved a hand to the few other guards in the room, who were there to train, but his authority was regained. A thin-lipped Baze helped her up from the mat. Her hair hung down in her face. It was all sweat and blood.

“Let her wash up, take her to the medic.”

Jyn’s body was less ruined than her face. It was mostly fleshy, bloody, bruising parts. Her lips was swollen in an angry sneer. She didn’t look at him. She walked on her own, possibly the strongest person in the room not because of the fight she lost, but the fight she had inside her.

**Author's Note:**

> There's more on tumblr, but I'll post those later. For now, leave me a comment and tell me what you think!!!


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